Lost Astronaut
by nothing-chan
Summary: Alfred was born with a spacesuit on, the minute he let out his first cry it was caught in a cage of glass and fetid air, keeping him safe against the crushing infinity all around. He could never take it off, even if he wanted too, he was an astronaut, an explorer, a simple spaceman who was dropped into a life of endless searching, always on the threshold of something great.


The suit was cumbrous and bulky on Alfred's limbs as he waded across the street, boots smacking into shallow puddles of water, scattering dirty rain all over the pant legs of business people with places to go and people to see, disturbing their folded seams and spotless hemlines. They glanced back at him in disgust, quickening their paces to escape his vicinity, disappearing but then reappearing merely seconds later, with different faces and different watches, but harboring the same pair of dead eyes. When one leaves 10 more take its place, and they crowded around Alfred, moving him along the slicked pavement, keeping his body floating past the honks and calls of taxis.

They bumped and pushed and shoved, rebounding off of his padded frame, flying away into the stars beyond. Unlike Alfred, they had no protection, so they would die, but he would live on, torpid with the weight livid across his body.

But he needed it; he was an astronaut, exploring the final frontier, flying past other worlds, capturing moon-dust and star-rocks in the palms of his hands. He needed the space suit, the clear glass helmet, and the oxygen tank pumping liquid life into his mouth at all times, keeping his feet moving and form wandering up and down the street, streetlights nebulas in the distance. Without this suit, he would perish; disintegrate into the vast emptiness of space, becoming nothing other than the rings surrounding distant gravitational giants.

A bell rang from above as he entered a forgotten café, a new international space station, almost close to closing, all of the workers tense with annoyance when he entered, already stacking up chairs and punching out cards. Alfred took a seat at a bar facing the front window, because he liked to watch the stars and people dance by, water licking their heels.

"What can I get you?" A blonde British boy appeared, apron wrapped around him, bags under his eyes, a dimming red giant ready to collapse in on itself. Alfred watched him for a minute, fingers tap, tap, tapping on the countertop, a tune only he knew, trying to figure out how to answer that simple question.

"Coffee, black," The waiter's earth green eyes widened at his words, anger seeping in and taking hold.

"That's it? Black coffee?" Alfred nodded, fingers still tapping, listening to a nearby space shuttle honk at a passerby.

"Yeah, that's it. Black coffee," Apparently that was the wrong answer, because the tired café worker slammed his notepad down on the counter, shoulders pulled tight and lips curled.

"That's it? Why didn't you make it yourself?" His voice echoed through the empty building, reaching over the grind of a coffeemaker and scratch of empty chairs. When Alfred didn't respond he continued, reaching out to grab onto his broad chest. "Do you have any idea how tired I am? How much I just want to go home? And you want _black coffee?_"

Alfred had never seen anyone so angry before. His eyes were dense and blazing, consuming every ounce of matter around them, a black hole of someone who had finally snapped, had enough, last nerve plucked and last string cut. The American had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time was all, he had fueled the super nova, set off the explosion that resulted in him being shoved out of his chair and up against a cold brick wall. The blonde's hands dug into the marshmallow layer covering his skin, twisting into the thick fabric, pulling so hard Alfred thought he might actually succeed in ripping it off of his body.

A fellow co-worker who had sat behind the counter witnessing it all returned, manager at his side, fear splashed across his face.

"Arthur!" The short man bound over, silk ponytail swinging behind him. Upon hearing his boss's voice, Arthur blinked, black hole breaking down, closing up and sealing off as he dropped his hands from Alfred's chest. The overwhelmed boy tried to calm his breath as he watched Arthur turn around, body now covered in weighted regret.

"Yao, I'm sorry. I-" Arthur began to speak, voice cracking as the man held out his hand, fingers beckoning.

"Badge, now," Arthur deflated, unpinning the object from his shirt, turning over the apron with it. "I suggest you learn to control your emotions like an adult before you expect others to treat you as such." He stood aside and left the path to the door open, a walk of shame Arthur followed, door ringing as he exited. Yao turned his attention to Alfred, who was still pressed against the wall and watching the door sit ajar.

"I hope you are not thinking of pressing charges. I can assure you he is no longer-"

Alfred left without drinking his coffee.

He jogged down the sidewalk, suit bouncing methodically as he appeared behind the slumped boy, slowing next to him.

"Hey, wait," Arthur looked over and rolled his eyes in disgust, skin corrugated and pale in the night cold.

"And just what do you want? Want me to attack you again? Want to get me fired from my next job?" Alfred just furrowed his eyebrows and quickened his pace to keep up with the fast-footed Brit, shoved mercilessly in all directions by abstracted travellers.

"Why are you so angry?" He asked, more of a whisper, but still there, and Arthur stopped, hands in his baggy pockets, turning to stare the confused spacefarer head on.

"You want to know why I'm so angry?" Arthur glared up defiantly, face smudged and glimmering from the other side of the thick glass. "Because I'm tired." They both stood for a minute, one inquiring while the other shivered, before Arthur turned again, stalking off down the street.

Alfred followed, a few steps behind, lost as he trailed after the small speck of rock meandering in front of him. Lights changed and water churned as they trekked across the great sky, weaving through galaxies and solar systems before landing abruptly on a concrete windowsill outside of a bustling pizza shop.

Arthur sat down, hands crushed against his mouth, eyes pensive as Alfred took a seat next to him.

"Alright, now you're just being creepy. Do I have to call 911?" Alfred began to laugh, but the sound never escaped the solid helmet keeping him safe inside, reverberating off of the see-through walls.

"I'll buy you pizza?" The boy offered, and Arthur glanced over, large eyebrows forked down in suspicion.

"Fine, I like mushrooms."

"Gross," Alfred commented, the other sending him a warning glance, before he got up and faded into the darkness.

When he returned Arthur had his head in his hands, face down and body hunched, a lonely, destitute gas giant much too important to be by itself. Alfred set the two slices down, one covered with every topping offered, the other with just plain mushrooms, and reclaimed his seat, spacesuit shifting as it settled around him, still resting heavily on his body. Arthur made no movement, his messy head still triturated between his hands, muscles wired so tight he looked about ready to snap again, becoming the great nothing he had become before.

"Why are you so tired?" Alfred asked, and Arthur sighed, sitting up finally and leaning his head back against the glass.

"Because life is tiring…" He closed his eyes, instantly dimming the surroundings, face hollow under the backlighting. Arthur peered out from under his veiny lids when Alfred held out the pizza to him, ivory gloved hand struggling to keep a grip on the flimsy paper plate. The Brit reluctantly took the food, biting into it, not quit hungry but not quit full, perpetual emptiness.

"I don't get it, why don't you just sleep?" Arthur sputtered into the food being shoved into his mouth, cheese dangling from his chin. When he had composed himself, he looked over with a condescending smirk, watching Alfred pick apart the slice on his lap, unable to put the food past the wall of glass around his head.

"It's not that easy," Arthur finished off his pizza, setting the empty plate next to him, eyes ablaze with explanation and heat, spitting off solar flares into the night between them. "You can't sleep away life."

Alfred looked down, calculating, running the words through his head, pulling up short in the end. They spun him at forces most people couldn't control and taught him how to survive on little to no air, but no one had ever told him how to handle this, how to respond to someone floundering without an oxygen tank, doomed to collide with their sad fate in an explosion of melancholy. He took a deep breath, fresh, clean air filtering into his lungs, a dizzying reminder to breath but not too much, because you could run out, and end up alone and damned just like the boy in front of him.

Arthur watched Alfred sort it all out in his head, and he couldn't help but snicker again, leaning forward in sadistic interest. "How old are you anyway? Or is something not right up there?" He motioned toward the tip of Alfred's helmet and the American touched the spot with unfeeling fingers, senses dulled by the fabric surrounding him. Alfred frowned, slightly offended, but didn't respond, instead looking out at the street, as if that were some kind of response.

People still crawled by, stars still collided, and Arthur watched him take it all in, blue eyes their own protostar, bursting and engulfing the light around, trapping them behind the lenses of his glasses. He had the look of someone not collected, someone who was so lost in their mind they did not exist in the reality everyone else did. They lived far away, drifting in space, unconnected with the troubles and excitements of usual life, idealists so consumed by their thoughts they lost sight of what they aimed for in the first place.

"Where are you?" Arthur asked, breath amassing in the air, flint scraping the electricity of the atmosphere.

"West 38th Street, outside Jo's Pizza Shop," Alfred muttered, flicking his eyes up to the sky, bombarded with whispers and twinkles from the lights shining down on him.

"Where do you want to be?" Arthur's lips tasted like stale parmesan and tomatoes as he waited patiently for Alfred to answer, hands clenching the cold stone beneath him.

"In space."

* * *

Alfred was 5 years old when he said he wanted to be an astronaut.

They said he couldn't.

Children without daddies could not be astronauts, at least that's what Tegan on the tire swing said, chapped lips cracking as he cackled and swung, sending dirt into the face of little Alfred F. Jones. That wasn't true, Alfred had said, his mommy said he could be whatever he wanted, even if he didn't have a daddy, but when Nicolas on the teeter-totter asked where exactly Alfred's mommy was now, if she was back in the crazy house downtown, Alfred ran away.

He was 15 years old when he said he wanted to be an astronaut.

They said he couldn't.

Being an astronaut required money, and good education, certainly something a foster child with no real home had, regardless of how many promises the government made him. He was doomed to a life of menial enjoyment and left-overs reheated in a shorted out microwave, and that was something he just needed to accept. All the other kids had, why couldn't he as well?

Because they were wrong. Alfred did not need the fancy font degree or the thousands of dollars to be an astronaut. Space was all around, underneath his fingernails, inside of his stale cereal boxes. It waited around the corner of solitary office buildings, jumping out to dig its nails into your skin and leave you collapsed on the ground like a wilting flower.

The stars were out all the time, during the day, the night, during the cold, during the warm, they were a solid friend who kept you safe during the storm and left you contemplating more on humid summer nights. Space was not something you travelled to see, it was something you saw all the time, and Alfred knew that, even if he was the only who could see it.

Alfred was born with a spacesuit on, the minute he let out his first cry it was caught in a cage of glass and fetid air, keeping him safe against the crushing infinity all around. He could never take it off, even if he wanted too, he was an astronaut, an explorer, a simple spaceman who was dropped into a life of endless searching, always on the threshold of something great.

* * *

But that wasn't true, not in the slightest.

There was no spacesuit, no oxygen tank forcing him to breathe intoxicating life every second. He was not heavy with extra padding, feet bricks of plastic boot that slammed the ground and dragged him to the earth. There was no glass, no mirror of deceit warping his vision and compacting everything he could have perceived into a morphed conception of the world.

He was a boy sitting outside of a now closed pizza shop, shivering against the cold in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, lungs collapsing as he breathed in on his own for the first time.

Arthur was gone by now, but in his place there was a small slip of paper, held down from the wind by a stray pebble. Alfred picked it up, the scrawling cursive spelling out a phone number and a note, _'You got lost in space, I needed to go home and shower. Call me one day when you land, astronaut.'_

Alfred stood up, body light, featherweight, slipped the paper into his pocket, and disappeared into the space all around.

* * *

_Hello._

_I am absolutely obsessed with spaceman Alfred (anyone remember pirates vs. vikings vs. space cowboys? that was the best) so I took him and shoved him in my own universe._

_Credit is due where credit is due, and this whole story is based off of the 'Lost Astronaut' photography series you can find here - **nachoalegre(dot com) / work / 2 / 7 3 . htm l** (remove spaces and use appropriate dotcom) When I first saw it I literally gasped and thought of Alfred, so that's where the inspiration comes from._

_One last thing, if you had not picked up on it, the whole spacesuit is a metaphor for depression. Now reread it with that idea in mind and tell me what you believe space stands for._

_Please review, favorite, and have a wonderful day._


End file.
